Head To Head

by Linda Ladd

  “Hey, I’m back here!” Harve was still in the sunroom, and he rolled his chair into the doorway, with his usual welcoming grin. He was always glad to have company when Dottie took off on her minivacations. But it was good for her to get away. Even angels needed occasional R & R.

  “How you doing, Harve?” I leaned down and hugged the guy. He smelled of Old Spice and Domino’s pizza. He wasn’t as obsessive as Bud about his appearance, but he kept himself well-groomed and neat whether Dottie was around or not.

  “Ready for company. Doctor Black, I presume. I’m Harve Lester. Welcome to my humble abode. I’ve heard a lot about you. My nurse reads your books. She’ll die when she finds out she missed you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Harve.” Black took the hand Harve extended and glanced around the sunny room with its lemon yellow walls and white woodwork. So often people didn’t know how to treat the handicapped, acted like they were deaf or dumb, or nonexistent, but Black was completely at ease. He smiled. “Nice place you have here. A good place to work, I’ll bet.”

  “The land around this cove’s been in my family for fifty years. Gave me a good place to retire to.”

  He swiveled his chair around and rolled across the hardwood floor to the desk in front of the windows. We followed, and Black asked, “You serve somewhere here in Missouri?”

  “I was one of Los Angeles’s finest, and proud of it. Didn’t Claire tell you? We worked Robbery/Homicide at the same time.”

  Black gave me a searching, psychiatrist look. As if I were one of the inkblots he liked to hang everywhere. “Claire holds her cards pretty close to the vest, Harve, but I suspect you already know that. Maybe you can give me the scoop on her.”

  “I sure as hell know better than to do something like that.” Harve laughed, but he knew where my secrets were buried like no one else. Although they were joking around, I felt uncomfortable enough to nip that conversation in the bud.

  “Let’s get started. I can’t stay long. Black, take a seat.” Sometimes I’m bossy.

  There was a round table with a white tile top near the windows, and Black and I both took matching Windsor chairs as Harve eased his wheelchair on the other side. Harve had been studying the autopsy photos, because they were spread out in plain sight. Out of respect for Black’s shaky emotions, I gathered them quickly together and turned them facedown. Black looked at me, blue eyes grateful, almost tender, and I felt embarrassed that he looked at me like that in front of Harve. Or at all. As if reading my mind, he smiled slightly and carved all those damned dimples of his. Something moved inside me that was downright saccharine. So I concentrated on Harve.

  “You got my e-mail, right?”

  Harve nodded, then looked at Black. “I understand you have quite a reputation in forensic psychiatry, Doctor Black. I’ll be interested in your take on this perpetrator.”

  “I’m Nick, okay? I can’t seem to persuade the detective here to go that informal, so maybe you’ll do me the favor.”

  “You bet. Nick it is.” Harve shook his head, but he was a straightforward, hardened, and experienced retired police officer, and he got right to the point. “I realize you’ve had some real bad news tonight, and I want you to know right off the bat that I’m sorry for your loss.” He glanced at me. “Claire told me the victim was your niece, and she also said you didn’t want anybody to know it. Whatever your reasons are for hiding the connection, they are none of my business. Rest assured that nothing we talk about here will ever leave this room.”

  Black looked surprised, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d told Harve or because Harve was willing to keep the secret. “I appreciate that, Harve. It’s a complicated situation, but I have very good reasons.”

  “So what do you think?” Harve said. “Have you gone over the evidence?”

  “First off, I want both of you to know that I can’t solve this case for you. All I can do is help you understand who the offender is and why he behaves the way he does. I don’t track down killers or apprehend them. That’s not my job; that’s Claire’s job. But I’ve had some success identifying why offenders choose to perpetrate crimes when and where they do.” Black glanced at me, as if reassuring me that if we danced this case together, he wasn’t going to step on my toes. “I study the victims’ lives and figure out who they were and why somebody wanted them dead.”

  “Victimology,” Harve said.

  Black nodded and drew in breath. “Unfortunately, this time I already know a great deal about Sylvie. That doesn’t mean she shared everything she did with me. Not even in our sessions did she open up completely. She was intimidated by her father and afraid I’d tell him her secrets. I wouldn’t have, of course, but she still held things back, things she felt were private. I’m particular about my privacy, too, so I understood how she felt. I know she trusted me, but I was her uncle, and if she was into anything sleazy or illegal, she wouldn’t have wanted me to know.”

  “Do you have reason to believe she was into something sleazy?” I said.

  “No,” he answered a little too quickly, but that could just be the protective uncle coming out. “Not really, but I’ve treated enough young starlets who led similar lives to know they’re tempted by drugs and alcohol and sex from the moment they hit Hollywood until the day they’re deemed too old to be in films.”

  “What’s that, twenty-one?” I said.

  “Yeah, Hollywood’s driven now by youth and weight. And that’s another thing these young women face: they’re forced to be dangerously underweight to get good parts, and that leads a lot of them to bulimia and anorexia. Sylvie was bulimic for a while, and you wouldn’t believe how many women I’ve treated for these kinds of problems. On top of that, the entertainment scene has a tendency to gobble these young women up, because they’re quickly surrounded by sycophants, suck-ups, and hangers-on, who encourage them to do whatever they want, whatever feels good.” I thought that might apply to Black as well, but I didn’t say so.

  “And they’re young and naïve, with money to burn, and they experiment no matter how grounded they were before they hit it big. Sylvie was into coke for a while. That’s when Jacques asked me to get her down to Cedar Bend for rehab and treatment.”

  “She did rehab here at the lake?”

  Black nodded. “It’s a good place for the big stars to go through detox. I have trained staff to help them kick the habit, while I work with them one-on-one. You’d be surprised the number of well-known people who’ve been here for treatment. Some really big names that you’d recognize.”

  Harve said, “I’ve been studying the police reports. What strikes me is the complete lack of physical evidence.”

  “Me, too. It’s rare to find nothing helpful, no hair, no threads from clothing. That could be why he chose to leave her in the water.”

  Black’s voice revealed nothing now; he’d internalized his emotions and was under steely, and I mean steely, control. He had put aside his personal feelings; he was ready to do whatever it took to find Sylvie’s killer. I doubted if he’d react with passion again until we took down the offender. Then he might very well kill the guy.

  Harve, on the other hand, seemed almost excited. He loved nothing more than solving a difficult case. And he was damn good at it. “The most significant clue in my book is the unusual posing of the body. He had a reason for putting her at a dinner table. I don’t know if the fact that he left the victim underwater is pertinent. Maybe, maybe not. Like you say, that could have been merely to eliminate trace evidence. That’s the key, I think, to understanding what’s driving him.”

  “Exactly,” Black said. “My sense is that he’s done it before. He’s probably a serial, but a sophisticated one who plans the crimes down to a T. As you probably know, most serial killers are white males in their twenties and thirties who come from lower-to middle-class backgrounds. Physically and sexually abused, sometimes emotionally. A common thread we’ve found is that nearly all of them set fires as children. They also have a tendency to torture
animals, and most of them wet the bed.”

  “So chances are we’re looking for a young man,” I said. “Are they likely to know their victims personally?”

  Black shook his head. “No, it’s usually a random selection, just a stranger at the wrong place at the wrong time. They kill, then have a cooling-off period, when they get off by reliving the murder until the thrill fades and they need to live out their fantasies again. It’s a psychological drive. The motive isn’t greed or passion, but a sadistic need to dominate the victim. That’s what I see the most in this guy and the things he does to his victims.”

  When Black’s swallow went down hard, Harve turned to the computer on the desk behind him. “Claire asked me to do a database search for similar crimes, and so far five murders have come up where the victim was found decapitated. One was in North Carolina about this time last year. Some hikers discovered a decapitated female body in heavy vegetation along the Cape Fear River, but the head was never found. The Greenville detective in charge told me they assumed it had been swept out to sea by river currents.”

  I tried to be diplomatic. “Did any of the cases have the remains of two different victims at the crime scene?”

  “No,” Harve said. “But that doesn’t prove anything. Most of these cases were covered by small town police departments without the means or experience to catch something like that. Buckeye’s an experienced criminalist, and he discovered the discrepancy almost by accident.” Harve was being considerate to Black, too.

  I was surprised Black could discuss this so soon, but he was completely focused now. “Small town police departments wouldn’t know the difference unless the victim was a local they recognized or they had dental records to prove identity. It could be why the offender confuses the identity, to hide his tracks.”

  “What about missing persons?” I said. “Did anybody go missing around Greenville in the same time period?”

  “I haven’t checked that out yet, but I’ll get on it right away.”

  I said, “It’s like a game he’s playing. My gut tells me he’s done this lots of times. Did you find victims as obviously posed as in this case?”

  “Not yet. One was found on a riverbank, with fishing gear scattered around. In Illinois, a middle-aged woman was tied to a tree, with her head in her lap. Another body was found in an alley in a Pensacola suburb. The head was found two blocks away, tied to a stop sign by the hair. None of the scenarios had much in common.”

  “Was there a commonality in cause of death?” Black asked.

  “One. All the victims were alive when the head was severed.”

  I tried not to watch Black’s jaw working convulsively as he ground his teeth. Black needed a breather, so I got up and went into the bathroom to give him some time to compose himself. I can be thoughtful sometimes.

  21

  By the time I returned to the table, Black had his emotions under strict control. He looked at me and said, “It sounds like a ritual thing. And he’s got a reason for beheading his victims. That’s why he’s taking the heads. We’ve got to figure out why he’s doing it this way. I agree with Claire that it’s a game, one he’s become very good at. How does he keep them? How does he transport them? Where does he kill the other victim? He’s got to have a home base that he works out of, some place where he feels safe and secure. Where he thinks discovery is impossible.”

  “Are you saying he might have a stash of victims somewhere?” I said, a little grossed out. “To use when he’s ready to kill again?”

  Black nodded. “I think it’s highly possible. Many serials keep the bodies nearby, like Gacy did in Chicago.”

  “And Dahmer,” Harve added.

  I said, “But how could he move around the Cedar Bend complex with all your security people and cameras and still have so much time to set up the scene, almost like a stage set?”

  “Sylvie’s an actress,” Black said. “He could have been putting her in some kind of scene. Some play or movie that he likes or that means something to his sick mind. Most of these offenders act out their fantasies; that’s how they get their reward. And most of the time their fantasies continue to evolve and get more complicated and more violent.”

  “It’d help to know who the other victim was. If we can pinpoint where she went missing, at least we’ll have a starting point.” Harve looked at me. “Any missing persons reports at the lake?”

  I shook my head. “I checked that again earlier tonight. But if she was a transient or homeless person, chances are no one would report her missing.”

  “Same applies to young runaways,” Harve said. “One case I ran across they identified a runaway teenager, a fourteen-year-old girl, when they published a picture of a toe ring found on the body. She was clean except for that. The killer overlooked it.”

  “Was she from this area?” Black asked.

  “No. She went missing from southern Indiana, a little town called Clarksville. Her head showed up in the mountains around Salt Lake City, Utah.”

  “Well, one thing we know without a doubt is that the killer is acting in an unusually cold-blooded manner.” Black sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Thinking. I’d seen him do that before. “Except for some battering, little true passion was involved. No overkill. All clinical and precise. In my experience, that probably points to a stranger as the offender. I think the crime scene was too impersonal to be anybody involved with her, like Gil Serna or any other boyfriend. Or me, if you’ve still got me on your list.”

  I didn’t say anything. He may still be on my list, but he was at the bottom of it. Instead, I said, “Do you think the perp chose her because she was famous?”

  “I’ve been considering that, and it’s possible,” Black said. “That’d mean the killer’s eager for publicity, wants to watch his handiwork on television, enjoy it all over and over again. It could be that he’s worked his way up to this point in his fantasies and feels invincible.”

  Harve nodded. “If that’s the case, he’s pacing the floor, waiting for the gory details to surface. He’s probably angry we’ve kept them under wraps.”

  “That could compel him to act again, sooner than he might’ve originally planned,” Black said. “Force the police to acknowledge his handiwork by killing in a public place. Or notifying the media himself. Several cases I’ve been involved in, the serial killer chose a particular reporter and worked through them to ensure he got the publicity he craved.”

  “I think he chose Sylvie on purpose,” I said, thinking about it from a different perspective. “He would never have selected a place like Cedar Bend, otherwise, not with all the security you provide your guests, if he didn’t have a certain victim in mind, someone staying there. Why not choose a place that was easy to get into, a victim who was helpless, like a derelict off the streets? Why put himself in danger of discovery when he didn’t have to?”

  “Then why Sylvie?” Harve asked, and both men turned to look at me.

  I said, “She’s famous, for one thing, and that makes her newsworthy. Maybe it was something to do with the TV show she played on. Something her character did that offended him. Or turned him on. Some people are abnormally obsessed with soap operas and believe the people on them are real. Maybe he hated her character, wanted to kill her and stalked her until he got her down here when she was alone and vulnerable.”

  “Sylvie played the good girl on the show,” Black said. “Moralistic, and always doing the right thing and expecting everyone else to do the same.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That could annoy a psychopath.”

  “Have you found out anything from the other cast members on her show?” Harve asked me.

  “Bud’s been checking into obsessed fans and digging for any stalking incidents, but he hasn’t come up with anything out of the ordinary. Marc Savoy’s been ruled out because he was with some fishermen at a local bar when the murder went down. Bud picked up Sylvie’s fan mail and interviewed the other actors on the soap when he was in New York. He�
�s going through it now for any leads.”

  While I’d been talking, Harve had rolled his chair into the kitchen and had returned with three longnecks of ice-cold Heineken. He set them in the middle of the table with a clink of glass. “What about the use of the duct tape, Nick? Is that significant in your estimation?”

  “If it’s over the mouth, sometimes it’s an attempt to silence the victim. Like when an abused son gets tired of hearing his mother nag and berate him, something like that. Same with over the eyes. Blind the victim so they won’t see the offender perpetrating the crime. In this case, I think it was more a means of control first, then later to keep the head in place.” I watched the realization hit Black again that it wasn’t just a victim, but that it was Sylvie taped to that chair in the lake. Harve met my eyes as Black pushed back his chair and walked out onto the back porch. He’d done fine for a while, but even Nicholas Black was human.

  I said, “He’s still shaky. He’s been through a lot tonight.”

  “Get him outta here. It’s too soon, whether he thinks so or not. Let me go over all this again and sort it out in my head. Come over tomorrow, and we’ll rehash it some more. Tell him I’ll send over the reports on similar cases when I get them all printed out.”

  “Okay.” I stood up and glanced outside. I couldn’t see Black on the porch. “Need anything, Harve? Groceries or anything?”

  “No. Dot fixed me up with some casseroles and frozen pizza.”

  “When’s she getting back?”

  “Monday or Tuesday. I miss her, but she deserves time off. I’m not always so easy to live with.”

  “You’re a teddy bear, and Dottie knows that better than anybody. Take care. Ring the bell if you need me.”

  As I was leaving, Harve said, “Don’t be too hard on the guy. It’s pretty obvious that he loved that poor girl.”

  “Yeah, I know. See you tomorrow.”